Monday, 29 August 2011

Smurfing hell

Somehow I contrived to raise my hopes, and suffered the consequences; The Smurfs was terrible. It only took a few comments of 'exceeded low expectations' for me to take leave of my senses; it might prove to be a guilty pleasure or a hidden gem... well maybe not that far, but I'd thought there might be something to enjoy, beyond a flimsy excuse to post a picture of Katy Perry.

And in eye-popping - I mean that literally - 3D too. I have only seen one film done well in 3D, though from a sample of four it’s hardly scientific. Coraline managed to make it part of the story; its use restrained in her ‘normal’ world, it’s only in the ‘other’ world that we get the full effect. In the other three films, which it occurs to me would have been crap in any dimension, it was full-on, all the time. This has two immediate side-effects; the first is the eye-wrenching alluded to earlier; the second is that you notice the limitations. I could distinguish layers, but with the result that each seemed more flat than if I’d been watching something ‘normally’; it reminded me of those cheap cartoons of the past, with a few overlaid backgrounds to give a sense of depth. Perhaps it’s a drawback pertaining to films converted to, rather than made in 3D. Hence I’ve not given up altogether, despite the film industry’s seemingly suicidal tendencies with this technology. I’ll have to be a little more discerning instead; not easy when you have a ten year old.